Steaming into a Victorian Future

A Steampunk Anthology

Edited by Julie Anne Taddeo and Cynthia J. Miller

A popular sub-genre of fantasy and science fiction, steampunk re-imagines the Victorian age in the future, and re-works its technology, fashion, and values with a dose of anti-modernism. While often considered solely through the lens of literature, steampunk is, in fact, a complex phenomenon that also affects, transforms, and unites a wide range of disciplines, such as art, music, film, television, fashion, new media, and material culture.

In Steaming into a Victorian Future: A Steampunk Anthology, Julie Anne Taddeo and Cynthia J. Miller have assembled a collection of essays that consider the social and cultural aspects of this multi-faceted genre. The essays included in this volume examine various manifestations of steampunk—both separately and in relation to each other—in order to better understand the steampunk sub-culture and its effect on—and interrelationship with—popular culture and the wider society. This volume expands and extends existing scholarship on steampunk in order to explore many previously unconsidered questions about cultural creativity, social networking, fandom, appropriation, and the creation of meaning.

With a foreword by popular culture scholar Ken Dvorak, and an afterword by steampunk expert Jeff VanderMeer, Steaming into a Victorian Future offers a wide ranging look at the impact of steampunk, as well as the individuals who create, interpret, and consume it.

Julie Anne Taddeo teaches British History at University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of Lytton Strachey and the Search for Modern Sexual Identity (2002), co-editor of The Tube Has Spoken: Reality TV and History (2009), and editor of Catherine Cookson Country: On the Borders of Legitimacy, Fiction, and History (2012).Cynthia J. Miller is the Film Review Editor of Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies. She is the editor of Too Bold for the Box Office: The Mockumentary from Big Screen to Small (Scarecrow, 2012) and coeditor of 1950s “Rocketman” TV Series and Their Fans: Cadets, Rangers, and Junior Space Men (2012) and Undead in the West: Vampires, Zombies, Mummies, and Ghosts on the Cinematic Frontier (Scarecrow, 2012).

IntroductionChapter 1: Some Notes on the Steampunk Social Problem NovelCatherine SiemannChapter 2: Useful Troublemakers: Social Retrofuturism in the Steampunk Novels of Gail Carriger and Cherie PriestMike PerschonChapter 3: Corsets of Steel: Steampunk’s Reimagining of Victorian Femininity Julie Anne TaddeoChapter 4: Love and the Machine: Technology and Human Relationships in Steampunk Romance and EroticaDru PagliassottiChapter 5: “Anything is Possible for a Man in a Top Hat with a Monkey, with a Monocle:” Remixing Steampunk in Professor Elemental’s The Indifference EngineJamieson RidenhourChapter 6: “In sum, evil has prevailed”: The Moral Morass of Science and Exploration in Jacques Tardi’s The Arctic MarauderErika Behrisch ElceChapter 7: “Fulminations and Fulgurators”: Jules Verne, Karel Zeman, and Steampunk CinemaJohn C. TibbettsChapter 8: Airships East, Zeppelins West: Steampunk’s Fantastic FrontiersCynthia J. MillerChapter 9: Enacting the Never-Was: Upcycling the Past, Present, and Future in SteampunkSuzanne Barber and Matt HaleChapter 10: Objectified and Politicized: The Dynamics of Ideology and Consumerism in Steampunk SubcultureDiana M. PhoChapter 11: “Love the Machine, Hate the Factory”: Steampunk Design and the Vision of a Victorian FutureSally-Anne HuxtableChapter 12: Steve Jobs versus the Victorians: Steampunk, Design, and the History of Technology in SocietyAmy Sue Bix Chapter 13: Remaking the World: The Steampunk Inventor on Page and ScreenA. Bowdoin Van RiperChapter 14: Steampunk’s Legacy: Collecting and Exhibiting the Future of YesterdayJeanette AtkinsonAfterword

Steaming into a Victorian Future looks at the potential that steampunk has to be a contributor to social change through consideration of its past and present. This collection is vast in its scope, critically evaluating 'texts' from an array of genres from the past, present, and future of this literary movement and its surrounding subculture, and is as valuable as an introduction to steampunk and its possibilities as any of the fiction collections available. — Monsters and the Monstrous

[This book is] the first compilation of academic texts on the subject. . . .This is a good overview of the many aspects of the [Steampunk] movement. — Popcultureshelf.com

• Winner, Peter C. Rollins Book Award in Popular Culture Studies (Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association, 2013)

Steaming into a Victorian Future

A Steampunk Anthology

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Paperback

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Summary

Summary

A popular sub-genre of fantasy and science fiction, steampunk re-imagines the Victorian age in the future, and re-works its technology, fashion, and values with a dose of anti-modernism. While often considered solely through the lens of literature, steampunk is, in fact, a complex phenomenon that also affects, transforms, and unites a wide range of disciplines, such as art, music, film, television, fashion, new media, and material culture.

In Steaming into a Victorian Future: A Steampunk Anthology, Julie Anne Taddeo and Cynthia J. Miller have assembled a collection of essays that consider the social and cultural aspects of this multi-faceted genre. The essays included in this volume examine various manifestations of steampunk—both separately and in relation to each other—in order to better understand the steampunk sub-culture and its effect on—and interrelationship with—popular culture and the wider society. This volume expands and extends existing scholarship on steampunk in order to explore many previously unconsidered questions about cultural creativity, social networking, fandom, appropriation, and the creation of meaning.

With a foreword by popular culture scholar Ken Dvorak, and an afterword by steampunk expert Jeff VanderMeer, Steaming into a Victorian Future offers a wide ranging look at the impact of steampunk, as well as the individuals who create, interpret, and consume it.

Julie Anne Taddeo teaches British History at University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of Lytton Strachey and the Search for Modern Sexual Identity (2002), co-editor of The Tube Has Spoken: Reality TV and History (2009), and editor of Catherine Cookson Country: On the Borders of Legitimacy, Fiction, and History (2012).Cynthia J. Miller is the Film Review Editor of Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies. She is the editor of Too Bold for the Box Office: The Mockumentary from Big Screen to Small (Scarecrow, 2012) and coeditor of 1950s “Rocketman” TV Series and Their Fans: Cadets, Rangers, and Junior Space Men (2012) and Undead in the West: Vampires, Zombies, Mummies, and Ghosts on the Cinematic Frontier (Scarecrow, 2012).

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

IntroductionChapter 1: Some Notes on the Steampunk Social Problem NovelCatherine SiemannChapter 2: Useful Troublemakers: Social Retrofuturism in the Steampunk Novels of Gail Carriger and Cherie PriestMike PerschonChapter 3: Corsets of Steel: Steampunk’s Reimagining of Victorian Femininity Julie Anne TaddeoChapter 4: Love and the Machine: Technology and Human Relationships in Steampunk Romance and EroticaDru PagliassottiChapter 5: “Anything is Possible for a Man in a Top Hat with a Monkey, with a Monocle:” Remixing Steampunk in Professor Elemental’s The Indifference EngineJamieson RidenhourChapter 6: “In sum, evil has prevailed”: The Moral Morass of Science and Exploration in Jacques Tardi’s The Arctic MarauderErika Behrisch ElceChapter 7: “Fulminations and Fulgurators”: Jules Verne, Karel Zeman, and Steampunk CinemaJohn C. TibbettsChapter 8: Airships East, Zeppelins West: Steampunk’s Fantastic FrontiersCynthia J. MillerChapter 9: Enacting the Never-Was: Upcycling the Past, Present, and Future in SteampunkSuzanne Barber and Matt HaleChapter 10: Objectified and Politicized: The Dynamics of Ideology and Consumerism in Steampunk SubcultureDiana M. PhoChapter 11: “Love the Machine, Hate the Factory”: Steampunk Design and the Vision of a Victorian FutureSally-Anne HuxtableChapter 12: Steve Jobs versus the Victorians: Steampunk, Design, and the History of Technology in SocietyAmy Sue Bix Chapter 13: Remaking the World: The Steampunk Inventor on Page and ScreenA. Bowdoin Van RiperChapter 14: Steampunk’s Legacy: Collecting and Exhibiting the Future of YesterdayJeanette AtkinsonAfterword

Reviews

Reviews

Steaming into a Victorian Future looks at the potential that steampunk has to be a contributor to social change through consideration of its past and present. This collection is vast in its scope, critically evaluating 'texts' from an array of genres from the past, present, and future of this literary movement and its surrounding subculture, and is as valuable as an introduction to steampunk and its possibilities as any of the fiction collections available. — Monsters and the Monstrous

[This book is] the first compilation of academic texts on the subject. . . .This is a good overview of the many aspects of the [Steampunk] movement. — Popcultureshelf.com

Awards

Awards

• Winner, Peter C. Rollins Book Award in Popular Culture Studies (Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association, 2013)